After rebooting, when I insert a blank disc for the first time, nothing happens. However, when I next right-click on my burner's drive F: in Explorer, select `Properties' and then `Cancel' on the first 'General' tab, Autoplay starts working: after inserting a blank disc, I get the `Format F:\' window! Further, Autoplay continues to work until the next rebooting.

Thus apparently some Autoplay properties aren't initialized properly until Explorer is forced to `look closer' at the drive.

I have Windows CD recording disabled and the IMAPI service set to manual. Ahead should clarify whether these two settings are relevant for InCD.

Details of my hardware and software environment:

InCD 4.0.1.0, Nero 5.5.10.28, XP SP1, no other burning software, no additional ASPI layer, Autorun on for the burner; Lite-On LTR-48125W VS0D in an external IEEE 1394 (FireWire) enclosure with the Oxford bridge OXFW911 (ME-320F from www.welland.com.tw) connected to the FireWire port of Dell Latitude C840; Nero InfoTool report, error.log and srverror.log don't show anything interesting, and hence are omitted.

Unfortunately, we do not have any Oxford enclosure yet, so no ME-320U2F neither. As we have to order some material, we prefere to order exactly the same as you are using. We have btw found a reseller in Germany having this enclosure, but not in stock - they said they should have it in July.

IMAPI service is running, and XP CD Recording is enable on the lite-on device. I have double-checked myself right now, and no, directly connected to IDE, it still works fine.

Yes, I've seen these reports in cdrlabs forum, although our QA is unable to reproduce (over 20 test machines). For them, auto-start and auto-insert are working.

Stupid question:

- When InCD is not install, do you have pop-up of Windows XP auto-start dialog for empty media?

I'm not sure what you mean by "IMAPI service is running". On my XP Pro box after boot-up, in Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services | IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service, I have "Status" empty and "Startup type: Manual". If I double-click "IMAPI CD Burning", I have "Service status: Stopped", and I can set "Startup type" to Automatic, Manual or Disabled. Thus I was asking about the "Startup type" employed in your testing.

I'm a bit suprised that you have Windows CD recording enabled, since the FAQ file suggests that it should be disabled. So what's Ahead's official recommendation?

I don't remember what happens on my box when InCD is not installed and a blank disc is inserted; I'll check once InCD 4.0.1.0 is gone. However, I do remember that everything worked as expected with InCD 3.52.40 and earlier versions, i.e., a window popped up, although I never changed any Autoplay properties at that time (the rest of my configuration was the same as now, including Windows CD recording disabled and IMAPI startup type manual).

As far as I remember, InCD 3.x is not using Windows XP autoplay - but maybe I'm wrong.

By "IMAPI service is running", I mean that the service have not been disable, but kept in its default value after Windows XP installation. As you might bet, we have clean system images for our tests that we restore at the beginning of a test. And doing this particular auto-start test with InCD 4, I let the default value for the IMAPI service. As far as I remember, default setting is manual, which mean that it will be started once an application make a call to IMAPI.

The FAQ suggests that Windows CD recording is disable as it have known bugs (namely, the shell integration of IMAPI blocks windows explorer refresh of disc available size, and, the XP erase feature forgot to send ioctl for lock and dismount volume). Although, we know that our users will like to use XP recording capacity as complement of InCD*, as well as products based on XP recording capacity, thus, we try to cooperate as best as possible with XP recording. Whenever it is possible, we do what we can do on our side.

So, for an "Ahead's official recommendation", I would said that you can use IMAPI & Windows XP recording capabilities, but you should not blame us for IMAPI bugs ;-) But I am not telling official things, check with the marketing people for official things.

This seems to me the best we can do, or...?

*: InCD is a packet-writing application, XP recording capabilities are CD-mastering - they are different tools. Of course, I largely recommand to use a CD-mastering application like Nero instead of Windows XP recording capabilities which are quite limitated.

With InCD 3.x, upon inserting a blank disc, I got the "InCD Disc Information" window; I would call this an autoplay feature, but our usage of autoplay may vary.

Just like you, I don't remember whether the default XP setting for the IMAPI service is manual. But if I were you, I would test all the settings (Automatic, Manual, Disabled) for InCD 4.x, and I would inform users if problems were detected with any particular setting.

The situation with Windows CD recording is similar, i.e., it's enough to inform users what problems to expect when it is enabled.

Thus in both cases we only need clarification, and of course Ahead shouldn't be held responsible for the IMAPI bugs. I believe that very few users would complain if Ahead recommended to disable Windows CD recording and the IMAPI service.

For InCD 4 we decided to take benefit of this Microsoft feature instead of implementing a proprietary "AutoPlay" (meaning, automatic opening of format dialog on blank media insertion). The way we do it is that we register into Windows XP as application capable of handling blank media. Of course, if Microsoft Windows XP AutoPlay feature have been disable by the user, and this is possible to disable, InCD 4 format dialog cannot be automatically displayed. :-/

About the default settings of Windows XP for IMAPI, I am sorry but Ahead does not have enough testers to test non-default settings of Windows considering the huge amount of settings available in Windows XP. Thus, we do test with the default settings of Windows. But of course, if an user found that some particular non-default setting cause trouble, we will deal with the bug accordingly (either fix it if possible, or recommand to not use the non-default setting if we can't fix the bug). Additionnaly, changing the starting level of services is a quite advanced setting of Windows that I would not recommand non-advanced user to play with. (You can't complain to burn your fingers after playing with fire - can you??)

> The situation with Windows CD recording is similar, i.e., it's enough to inform users what problems to expect when it is enabled.

This is what we were already doing in the FAQ about the (cosmetic only) problem we did knew when InCD 4.0.1.0 was put on the web. :-)

We shall wait and see whether Ahead's decision to move from proprietary AutoPlay to MS's AutoPlay for InCD 4.x was wise. Right now InCD's AutoPlay for Blank CD doesn't work for a significant portion of users. Note that in my case XP's AutoPlay works fine for everything except Blank CD, so I would find it hard to believe that the problem lies with XP SP1. Thus I hope Ahead will fix this bug instead of trying to shift responsibility to MS.

I'm sorry to hear that it exceeds Ahead's capabilities to test just three IMAPI settings. Especially because these settings, together with Windows CD burning, seem to be the only ones pertaining directly to CD burning.

Going back to specifics, do you mean that your QA team didn't find a single case of XP's AutoPlay failing for Blank CD?

> Right now InCD's AutoPlay for Blank CD doesn't work for a significant portion of users.

As soon as we will be able to reproduce this problem on our computers we will try to solve that issue.

> Note that in my case XP's AutoPlay works fine for everything except Blank CD, so I would find it hard to believe that the problem lies with XP SP1. Thus I hope Ahead will fix this bug instead of trying to shift responsibility to MS.

Have you try to uninstall InCD 4 and see if you get prompted by XP's AutoPlay for Blank CD once InCD 4 is de-installed? (Proving that we are guilty and not MS).

> I'm sorry to hear that it exceeds Ahead's capabilities to test just three IMAPI settings. Especially because these settings, together with Windows CD burning, seem to be the only ones pertaining directly to CD burning.

I'm sorry to hear that you are not able to read what I wrote [:0] : "...I am sorry but Ahead does not have enough testers to test non-default settings of Windows considering the huge amount of settings available in Windows XP."

The question is not just IMAPI/XP, the question is that there are more things to test than we can humanily test(!). Thus, not-default settings of IMAPI/XP will not be tested by our QA as long as we have not completed tests higher-priority default configured Windows systems. Considering that our engineers are weekly producing new InCD versions with bug fixes and improvements to test to our QA, it might be that these higher-priority tests will exist for quite a long time.

But if an end-user (you?) proposed himself to test these extra-settings we do not have the time to test, we will be happy to hear about his findings. ;)

> Going back to specifics, do you mean that your QA team didn't find a single case of XP's AutoPlay failing for Blank CD?

Exactly. That's well our problem, we are not able to make progress on this issue because we are not able to reproduce it. Unfortunately, I do not see how we could remote-debug this one.

OK, if Ahead can't reproduce the problem, then we'll have to wait until more users complain.

The main reason I've not uninstalled InCD 4.0.1.0 so far is that I've been waiting for new versions of Nero Clean Tool and InCD Clean Tool, promised by Craig Campbell at CDRLabs on June 11, but still unavailable. Testing XP's AutoPlay after removing InCD 4.0.1.0 wouldn't prove much if InCD 4.0.1.0 didn't uninstall cleanly via Add/Remove Programs (and Craig's comments were not encouraging).

As for testing non-default XP settings, you missed my point: Since you had mentioned "the huge amount of settings available in Windows XP", I told you that only three IMAPI settings and Windows CD burning seem to be most relevant to InCD. Could you enlighten us as to which other XP settings get higher priority at Ahead?

Anyway, if only limited testing has been done so far, Ahead should be honest about it. The InCD website should warn that only default XP settings have been tested, and the FAQ file should specify these settings.